For many years we had been struggling to find a suitable options for our business which happens to be in the digital design space. We started out with a few clients and initially used to track jobs through the work pipeline manually. I clearly remember creating a manila folder for each job and using these to track where the job was and all expenses associated with the job. At the end of the job when it was time for invoicing I would create an invoice shoot it off to the client and wait to be paid.
As or business grew, so did the issues in managing all the jobs. There could be at any one time around 50-60 jobs in the pipeline spread over 4 to 5 designers. Sure business was great and yes this is a happy problem, but we really needed a solution to streamline and manage the whole work flow process. We also needed a way to track invoices sent and when they were paid. It took us about a month of searching online and going through a few CRM systems but we finally settled on Zoho and are so happy we finally did.
Zoho has essentially liberated us and given us the freedom to easily manage and track all jobs within seconds. The added beauty is that all our designers and now account managers can easily login and not only see what’s happening with a particular job but they can easily edit jobs as they evolve and change over time. Like so many projects we have, clients change their mind and with Zoho, we can quickly get into the interface, amend the quote and send it to the client for approval. Not only has it added to our revenue stream it has also meant that we are able to keep clients up to date on their job and overall expenses. In our business a happy client is a repeat client and this is what we rely on heavily.
One other point to note is that Zoho can be used as a nifty marketing tool. All the inquiries we get from our website are funnelled into Zoho and used later for direct marketing purposes. Zoho CRM is incredibly good at lead management and has over the past couple over years aided the expansion of our design agency.
If I had to summise Zoho up in a couple of words it would be: practical, crucial even integral. It’s now the centre piece of our business and I couldn’t imagine running it without it.
Leave A Comment